Pastel (Portrait)

Description

A prolific artist, Bascom created more than 1,400 profile portraits during her extensive travels around New England with her husband Ezekiel, a Congregationalist minister. According to her diaries, she never considered herself a professional artist and often made profiles for her own pleasure or as gifts for family and friends. Her process involved using a candle or lamp to cast a shadow of the sitter’s head, tracing the outline, then filling in the details and the background with pencil and pastel. Seven years old at the time of this portrait, Sarah and her brother Henry (2024.0014.006.002) descended from a large Massachusetts family, though little is known of her later life until her death in 1926, aged 93.